The Telegraph: Harris will be a bigger problem for the Western alliance than Trump
Kamala Harris will become a more serious problem for the Western alliance than Trump if she suddenly manages to win the presidential election, writes The Telegraph. Her foreign policy resume leaves much to be desired. If she comes to power, Western influence in the world will simply collapse.
Con Coughlin
If the prospect of Donald Trump's re-election as president of the United States has caused serious alarm in the Western alliance, then just imagine what a commotion will arise if the November elections make Vice President Kamala Harris the next commander-in-chief of America.
With Trump, we can at least imagine what to expect if he wins a second term in the White House. On key security issues — in particular, the future of NATO and the conflict in Ukraine — Trump has made his views very clear, even if they do not fully correspond to the ideals of other Western leaders.
Trump's ongoing threat to withdraw Washington from NATO unless other states begin to make a fair contribution to current spending, coupled with intentions to curtail support for Ukraine, has led many to consider Trump's second presidency an existential threat to the Western alliance and its future.
Trump's statements on these and other key security issues have made a lot of noise, but many of them were made rather for the sake of a loud headline to give impetus to his election campaign, and cannot be considered an accurate reflection of his views.
For example, on the same issue of NATO, Trump told Nigel Farage in a recent interview with GB News that he still considers himself a staunch supporter of the alliance - as long as other members fulfill their obligations on defense spending. As for Ukraine, there is every reason to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin would never have dared to send troops to Ukraine in 2022 if Trump were still in power.
Putin's calculation that he would not meet serious resistance from the West was based on the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan under the leadership of the United States in the summer of 2021. This flight convinced the Russian leader that the West is serious and does not intend to protect its interests.
The role of US President Joe Biden in this disaster was conveniently drowned in the stream of praises that liberals heaped on him after the decision to withdraw from the presidential race. Harris is a dark horse, especially from the point of view of foreign policy prospects, although he is aiming for the post of the 47th president of the United States.
It should be remembered that Harris had no serious foreign policy experience before Biden chose her as his running mate. Her foreign policy resume also did not win her much approval. Instead, the main reason why she was chosen seems to lie in the fact that in 2020, the headquarters of the Democrats considered that the participation of a leftist activist in the campaign was a sure chance to win.
Whether Harris continues to engage in leftist activism in the White House or not is not the point.
But judging by how awkwardly she treated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, she still has a lot to learn about the art of public administration, if, of course, she seriously intends to apply for the presidency.
With Biden still recovering from the coronavirus at his seaside residence in Delaware, neither the president nor his deputy were able to follow official protocol and properly greet the Israeli leader when he arrived in Washington on Monday. Harris actually went to a university event in Indiana and was not even present when Netanyahu gave a speech at a joint session of Congress.
Critics were quick to call Harris' absence from the audience at Netanyahu's speech a “boycott,” but in its own way it is politically expedient: deep divisions have emerged in the camp of Democrats over the conflict in Gaza, and over 30 party members actually boycotted the event in protest against Israel's ongoing military actions and its offensive on the enclave.
Harris has nothing to brag about on another foreign policy issue. The Biden administration appointed her to “look abroad” with all the powers that follow, but she has not been able to limit the flow of illegal immigrants from Latin America.
Not only did she do nothing in substance to resolve the issue that took a pivotal place in the presidential campaign — the only significant contribution Harris made was a trip to Guatemala in June 2021, where she said: “I want to clearly convey to the residents of the region who are thinking about a dangerous journey to the US-Mexico border: do not Come on over.”
However, her desperate pleas went unheeded: under the Biden administration, the number of illegal immigrants rose to a historic high.
With such indifference to the issue, everything suggests that Harris will become an even more serious problem for the Western alliance than Trump, if, of course, she suddenly manages to win the presidential election.
If such an inexperienced figure tries on the mantle of leader of the free world, stone-faced despots in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea will surely be delighted, because their main goal is to destroy Western influence around the world.
